Review of Free Software for the Budget Minded Small Business
Posted by
Emily Land on Mon, Oct 24, 2011 @ 03:41 PM
A great way a new business can trim costs is to forgo the pricy name-brand software packages and use open source software instead. You may also see it called Freeware or Shareware. In our busy telephone answering service we have used many such products with great success. The following is a list of the ones we have found that are extremely useful.
Office Use - Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/
This no cost software has a word processor that will open or save as a Word document, a spreadsheet comparable to Excel, slideshow function and database. The program is very similar to the MS products, but there some minor differences. For the fine price of $0, I've learned to adapt to the small changes. The one thing this software bundle doesn't offer is a pdf converter.
No worry, Primo Pdf will cover that need. http://www.primopdf.com/index.aspx
This handy program will allow you to covert any document to .pdf as easily as printing. Select Primo PDF from your print options and it is converted. Simple!
Bookkeeping - Gnu Cash http://www.gnucash.org
I recently discovered this wonderful program while looking for a new bookkeeping program for Answer Center. It has a checkbook-style entry and allows you to easily designate between expenses, liabilities and income. Reports include balance sheet and profit and loss statements. It took very little time to set up the check book register and so far I haven't run into any quirks or problems. I will be sure to update this post if that changes.
Website Design
If you want to get your company out there on the information superhighway and don't require a complex site then why don't you do it yourself? Too hard? That's what the webdesign people want you to think. First find a template that suits your needs. You can find lots of free templates here http://www.freecsstemplates.org/ Next, download and unzip your choice. Next, download Kompozer http://kompozer.net/ This software will allow you to change the template you just downloaded and then you can upload it with Core FTP Lite http://www.coreftp.com/. The only thing you will have to pay for is the hosting and url name. (If you don't have a program to unzip the css template with, be sure to check out 7-Zip, an open source unzipping program http://www.7-zip.org/). I will post another article soon giving more detailed instructions on how to use Kompozer.
I have a few more free/open source software solutions I will share with you. Also look for a more in depth explanation on using Kompozer for your small business.